Wednesday, November 30, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 30: Big Finish!
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 29: Big Day, Late Post
Today turned out to be a surprisingly huge writing day!
Admittedly, the writing on The Martial Maenads is rewriting in a third draft, so there's large chunks that I'm just retyping rather than properly rewriting, but most paragraphs get at least a tweak, if not major changes, so...hopefully it counts? ("Counts" I say, as if there was anyone who even could make rules for what "counts" in my totally unofficial personal NaNoWriMo that doesn't use their new, ugly site.)
Got 11,518 words rewritten of The Martial Maenads today! That may well be a personal best! (Even for rewriting, I mean. I'm pretty sure it far tops my best day for actual writing...though there was one day in an official NaNo where I got about 10k words written, so it doesn't win by very much. That was probably the year that I broke 200k...)
I also wrote down another MDZS AU fanfic plot after my bath, for an additional 1,251 words.
Thus, my total for the day is a whopping 12,769!
That brings my total for this November up to 81,676!
I'm hoping that I can dedicate all day tomorrow to writing, so I can really beef up my numbers. XD (The fact that tomorrow is going to be totally freezing (after today was so warm I didn't even need a jacket) may help me stay in and just write write write write...)
Monday, November 28, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 28: Glass Onion
I did all my writing this morning--redid the prologue of The Martial Maenads, to the tune of 6,458 words--because this afternoon we all went out to see Glass Onion, the sequel (sort of?) to Knives Out.
OMG, so good! (Which, really, is only to be expected, given how awesome Knives Out was.)
I don't want to say too much about the movie, because it's definitely best not to have a lot of spoilers going in, but I can safely say that everything was just top-notch: script, direction, acting, set design, costumes (omg, some of the costumes!!), everything. Part of me wants to mention some of the cameos, but those, too, probably are best experienced as a surprise, so I won't. Since it's made apparent so early in the film, though, I'll go ahead and mention that the movie also gets an A+ in "perfect release timing," because Edward Norton's character is essentially a parody of Elon Musk. (Not 1-to-1, mind you, but close enough that the influence is obvious.)
Thankfully, I don't write mysteries, so I don't have to feel pitiful by comparison. ;) (Now that I think about it, though, this makes both the last two movies I've seen in theaters murder mysteries: the previous movie I went to see was See How They Run, which was in most respects just as good, but just didn't quite click with me for whatever reason.)
Anyway, my NotNaNo totals:
Today's word count, 6,458
Words written in November to date: 68,907
(Though I look at how I phrased that and feel like I ought to log into the NaNo site and get all my past November word counts, and all my word counts from my past NotNaNo Novembers, and add them all to this year's total and look at how many words I've written in the month of November over the last 11 years...)
Sunday, November 27, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Days 26 & 27: One more task done(ish)
So, yesterday I was sorta wiped, mentally, and didn't feel like booting up my internet computer (my novels are on my beloved 15+ year old laptop that has never once touched the internet), so I didn't post anything, but I did get my writing in! Yesterday I added another 1,303 words to my total, exclusively working on the new content for The Golden God of Aiolia, most of which was in one big 940-word chunk! (I handled making that battle interactive in a different way than I had in any of the previous ones, where each menu gives you two choices, and one of them leads straight to the end of the fight, but the other keeps leading to more choices until you finally get to one that either leads to a game over or to an altered version of the end of the fight; I've already forgotten which it was...π )
Then today I actually finished up the new content for The Golden God of Aiolia, another 713 words...plus I came up with a really good idea for how to develop the relationship in one of the MDZS AU fanfic ideas I'd had before, and wrote another 1123 words describing the idea. π
I'm not sure where my word count will come from for the remaining three days of November, though, since my next task ought to be getting the new material for The Golden God of Aiolia coded into its Ren'py version, which isn't an adding words kind of thing. (I mean, there will be some words of code, but it's not the same thing at all, plus there wouldn't be very many of them.)
I suppose rather than diving right into the coding, I could start work on the next draft of book three, The Martial Maenads, but...honestly, I still have some questions about how to handle one of the new characters, and I don't know if I can get advice in time to start work already by tomorrow. π° I should probably also reread the current draft before I start on the next one.
Technically, I spotted enough errors in The Golden God of Aiolia that I probably ought to read it over again to fix things, but if I do that, shouldn't I also go back and fix up book one while I'm at it? It's sort of endless...
...so maybe I shouldn't try to do anything more than adding the interactivity and the new slight sub-plot (it's more just a background story thread than a proper sub-plot) right now and wait until I've gotten the entire series released and then do a proper fixing up on them all.
Hmm.
I'll have to think about that.
Anyway!
Word counts!
November 26:
Words written: 1,303
Month to date: 60,613
November 27:
Words written: 1,836
Month to date: 62,449
Friday, November 25, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 25: Finally moving on
Today, I really did finally start working on the upgrade to The Golden God of Aiolia. I redid the first Deidameia scene to imply that she's actually only into women and thus only liked Achilles because he was dressed as a girl, and I completed the first interactive bit. Well, completed writing the new text for it. It's not coded, and certainly not put into Ren'py yet, but...that's much faster than figuring out how the heck I wanted to go about adding interactivity to an already completed fight scene. (Even worse, a fight scene between three young people and a twice-life-size stone statue with limited intellect. Much reduced options for things to happen there, esp. when one of the people in question can't really take part in the fight.)
The next scene on the schedule for reworking is the second spot to add some interactivity, a big battle scene...which I somehow managed to completely avoid adding an actual battle to the first time around. π
So, it kinda actually needed an upgrade there anyway. But I suck at writing fight scenes in any way, so I rather choked on that and ended up stopping after the first section of new text. (I'd had enough trouble adding to the first one! Trying to write two combat scenes in one day was just too much for my poor brain!)
Trying to count my words for all that was kinda crazy, though: I had to just sort of highlight the new bits and get the word count for each individual new bit and then add them together. (One of them was literally only one word!)
Anyway, the word count I ended up with for today was 1,423, which would be bad if I hadn't hit 50k yet, but since I have, I think it's acceptable. :)
Total words written in November to date: 59,310
BTW, I wanted to share something really stupid I did yesterday. A brief quote:
"What is wrong with you?!" Wei Ying shouted!
I have no idea why I put an exclamation point after "shouted," but it's so funny I couldn't bear to delete it yet. π (I'll get rid of it when I edit the fic before posting it, though...)
Thursday, November 24, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 24: Why do I make plans?
So, yesterday I stupidly made plans that involved doing things on a holiday.
Yeap. Stupid.
Naturally, by the time I got home after Thanksgiving at my parents' place (which of course involved watching like two hours of TV, because what else would anyone do at their parents' place?), I was in no state to start in on something complicated and draining like reworking several segments of an already released novel.
On the other hand, during lulls in the day I'd managed to use Google Docs on my phone to finish up that fanfic, so...yay?
I'd also written some more on it last night after posting, another 533 words.
Then today, in and around everything else, I added the final 1,674 words. (Admittedly, I will probably have to pad out that ending whenever I update that piece before posting it, but that's a future me problem.)
So, my total words written to date this November are 57,887!
And tomorrow I really will start working on adding that lesbian sub-plot to The Golden God of Aiolia. Also to writing up a few interactive bits.
I got nothing else to write, so this time I really am gonna do it!
Honest!
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
NaNo Rebel '22, Day 23: Main Project Completed! XD
ππThe VN script that was my main project for this year's super-duper-unofficial NaNo is now completed!!!!ππ
Well, my part of it is completed, anyhow.
I had to leave the romantic, poetic and combatic (lol) parts to my collaborator, but my portion was the larger portion, clocking in at just over 35k words. (Though that includes notes, speaker names, and other stuff that would not appear on screen in the finished game.)
There's still a lot of work left to do before the game is ready for release, but thankfully that's not my department!
(Uh, unless I end up having to do the 3D work to create a number of the backgrounds. We sort of dropped our discussion of that. There's someone on itch.io who's selling 3D models of buildings and furniture from the right period, but there's some question marks about how to use them, and we didn't actually decide which of us would be the one attempting it, so...π€·)
Anyway, I still haven't finished that one fanfic I was working on, but that's irrelevant.
Starting tomorrow I will finally be going back to the second book in the Atalanta and Ariadne series to add in that lesbian sub-plot! And then I get to work on the next draft of the third book! Yaaaaaay!!!! π
Today's word count: 4,095
Total words written this month to date: 55,680